Dr. Thomas McLoughlin:

To follow on from that, we have spent more than €300 million of EU taxpayers' money on safety research into GM technology over the past 30 years. In 2010, the then European Commissioner Máire Geoghegan-Quinn published a study that stated GM technology per se was no more harmful than conventional plant breeding. As a case in point, if we look back to Teagasc and the GM potato, which I am sure we will hear more about, that DNA that came from a wild variety of potato made it blight tolerant. That was done using GM technology and the same could have been done using plant breeding. What was done in Teagasc and Wageningen University was to speed up the process. Senator Paul Daly mentioned the resistance to ash dieback as well. The power of this technology can be used to speed up the plant breeding process.

As for safety, EU studies have concluded it is no different, and I imagine the same will be said about gene editing. As Dr. Badmi said, some of the gene editing techniques happen in nature, and that is why we cannot differentiate between some CRISPR techniques and what happens in nature. There is no technique to evaluate that change. In the case of many of the GM products on the market at the moment, such as in Spain, there has been a reduction in the use of pesticides. That must be good for both climate and biodiversity, two very important issues. Of course, the European Green Deal seeks to reduce the use of plant-protection products but, as Dr. Doyle Prestwich asked, if we reduce their use and get rid of them, how will Irish potato farmers farm their potatoes without the use of some of these techniques? This is why we are arguing that CRISPR-Cas9 could take the place of some of the chemicals we use to control potato blight in Ireland. We have to be very careful.